Thought Questions- Jot down your thoughts! Why do you obey some rules and disobey others at school? Have you ever been convinced by friends to do something you knew was wrong? To do something you knew was right? Do you consider yourself a conformist or a nonconformist? Why?

Unit 12: Social Pyschology CHS AP Psychology Unit 12: Social Pyschology Essential Task 12-1:Apply attribution theory to explain the behavior of others with specific attention to the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, just-world hypothesis and differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures Logo Green is R=8 G=138 B=76 Blue is R= 0 G=110 B=184 Border Grey is R=74 G=69 B=64

Social Psychology The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people

Social Cognition: How you think about people? Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition? Primacy effect Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions We are “cognitive misers” Self-fulfilling prophecy A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile

Impression Formation Schemata Ready-made categories Allow us to make inferences about others (good for cognitive misers) Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information We will remember characteristics of our schema that weren’t there

Impression Formation Stereotypes A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category It is usually unfair Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

Attribution Attribution Theory: tries to explain how people make judgments about the causes of other people’s behavior Three criteria used to judge behavior Distinctiveness: Is this how the person treats everyone or are you different? Consistency: Has the person always treated you this way or is this different? Consensus: Do other people do this same thing or is this really different?

Attribution: Why did he do that? Example Bob walks past you without saying hi. Distinctiveness: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he does this to everyone in the hall or just you Consistency: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he always says hi to you or if you don’t really know each other. Consensus: Whether you’re in New York vs. a college of 600 will change how you explain Bob’s behavior. ACTIVITY

Biases in Attribution: The errors to which your guesses will succumb Actor-Observer Effect: attribute actions of others to internal factors and the actions of yourself to external factors Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior Defensive attribution Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures to external factors Just-world hypothesis: Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people Attribution across cultures varies dramatically

Effects of Attribution How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

Attitudes: feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose our reactions to objects, people, and events The Nature of Attitudes Relatively stable Beliefs – facts and general knowledge Feelings – love, hate, like, dislike Behaviors – inclination to approach, avoid, buy Self-monitoring High self-monitors look for cues about how they are expected to behave Makes using attitudes to predict behavior difficult Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making prediction easier

Attitude Development Many factors contribute to the development of attitudes Imitation Reward Teachers Peers Mass media

Attitudes Can Affect Action Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior. OBJECTIVE 4| Describe the conditions under which attitudes can affect actions.

Attitude Change Process of persuasion Must get and maintain the person’s attention Must comprehend the message Comprehension leads to acceptance

Attitude Change How the message gets comprehended and then accepted is by these things: Source (credibility is key) Message itself (more effective when it acknowledges other arguments and then gives novel ones – a little fear is good) Medium of communication (writing good for complex, media better for audience with a gist, face-to-face is the best) Audience’s characteristics

Routes a Message Can Take to Persuade You Central Route to Persuasion when the attitude of the audience, or individual, is changed as a result of thoughtful consideration of the message. Peripheral Route to Persuasion occurs when positive or negative cues (such as images, sounds, or language) are associated with the object of the message. An advertisement featuring a song that the audience member likes, or a person whom the audience member sees as appealing might cause a person to have positive feelings toward the brand, without that person ever thinking deeply about the message.

Other techniques Foot-in-the-door phenomenon Low-ball technique Brainwashing Write-it-down technique Fifty-words-or-less technique Look at textbook under Teaching Tip pg 646 Myers 9th edition

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon Festinger 1957) Occurs whenever a person has two contradictory cognitions or beliefs at the same time. They are dissonant, each one implies the opposite of the other. The less coerced and more responsible we feel for an action the more dissonance. The more dissonance the more likely we are to change our attitude It creates an unpleasant cognitive tension and the person tries to resolve in the following ways: (see next slide)

Audience Characteristics Most difficult to change if Strong commitment to present attitude Attitude is shared by others The attitude has been held since early childhood Up to a point the larger the difference between message and audience the more likely attitudinal change will occur Low self-esteem more likely to change

Resolution of Cognitive Dissoance 1. Sometimes changing your attitude is the easiest way to solve this. Example: I am a loyal friend, but yesterday I gossiped about my friend Chris . . . Well I can’t change my action . . . but I don’t want to change my view of myself, so my attitude about Chris must be wrong. He is more of an acquaintance than a friend. 2. Increase the number of consonant elements – the number of thoughts that back one side. It was awesome gossip Reduce the importance of one or both of the sides The person I gossiped with won’t really tell that many people.